She reached over and lightly traced the path of the scar down his face with her fingers. “When I first saw you with your sporting house queen, I was terribly afraid of you. We all were. You were so grand, and you scowled so magnificently, and you made such a splendid Iago.”
“You mean you’re not afraid of me now, wench? We’ll soon fix that!”
She laughed, the sound husky and sated in her ears. “You know when I first knew I — wanted you?” She had almost said the word love, from which she knew instinctively he would shy away.
He shook his head, smiling.
“When you put your head on my lap by that waterfall at San Xavier. Was it only yesterday, the day before? No — no, it had to have been earlier, even before I knew who my real father was...” She paused then. “You know, I’m not even sure.”
“Not when you saw me bathing naked with the others?” he teased.
“You wretch, you saw me, didn’t you?”
“Not you, but your clothes. I knew you had to be somewhere nearby, and probably watching. If the others hadn’t been there, I’d have come looking for you, and we wouldn’t have wasted all this time.”
“I might have refused you, you know, as I did Will and Gavin.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said confidently.
“How do you know?”
“I knew that time I kissed you in Puebla. That, my girl, was when I began to want you.”
“That long ago?” she said wonderingly.
“You responded as if you’d been at it all your life,” he taunted her. “You certainly looked as if you’d been at it for a bit when I came upon you and Will under that tree. You weren’t acting very reluctant then.”
“How did you feel when you saw us?”
“Envious. Sad, too, because I thought he’d do you wrong. As it turned out, it was you who did him wrong. What did you do to him in Guanajuato? I never saw him quite so put out.”
“I let him get almost as far as you have, and then I got cold feet.”
“I wonder he didn’t strangle you — I would have.”
“He was very sweet. I felt miserable about it.”
He grinned. “Maybe you really wanted me even then and didn’t know it, that’s why you turned him down.” He carefully avoided mentioning Gavin.
Against her better judgment, as if she couldn’t help herself, “I don’t know about then, Jason, but I know it’s gone beyond wanting now.” She looked down on the bare rock where a tiny ant was trying to move a pebble far larger than itself instead of going around it.
He lifted her chin. “Look at me, love. I told you how I had to go, didn’t I, how I’ve always had to pick up and go on, to see what’s beyond the horizon? I’m just not made to sit at home in front of the fire, that’s why I wouldn’t have taken you if I’d known you were a virgin. The first time, you always think it’s for forever; after that first one, you find out that sooner or later another love will always come along. Perhaps not as good, perhaps better, always different, but another all the same.”
She nodded and forced a bright smile. “Until we come to San Bias, I’ll pretend otherwise, if that’s all right with you. After all, this trip is all we’ll have, so let’s not guard ourselves, let’s make the most of it, shall we?”
He held her head hard against his chest for a moment. “You’re some girl, you are. Come on now, we’ve got to get started or we never will.”
That night as they lay down together, sunburned and tired, he brought out a familiar jar. Roberta broke into a peal of delighted laughter. “So she gave you one too? Do you carry it around your neck with you?”
He looked taken aback for a moment, then grinned. “She did at that, and as a matter of fact I had evil designs on you at the falls.”
“Did you now? You certainly didn’t give any sign of it.”
He stopped smiling. “I was afraid to. What was Chepina doing giving you this anyway?”
Roberta laughed again. “I told her way back in Veracruz that I was going to meet a lover to explain my going off to the meeting with you.”
“Where is it now?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even know. I suppose it’s somewhere in my baggage.”
“What would you have done if Will had gotten you with child?”
“The same thing I’ll do if you get me with child. I’ll go ahead and have it and love it, what else would I do?” Jason looked uncomfortable. “About that, Robbie - ” “Hush. We weren’t going to guard ourselves, remember? We could still be caught any day now, have you forgotten? We might look up at those cliffs opposite us tomorrow morning and see a line of horsemen up there watching us, just waiting for us to come to a place where they can get at us.” She paused. “If they do, I’ll die a damn sight happier now than I would have before I knew what living was all about, I’ll tell you that. When I took your shackles off, I was taking off mine as well, and you can’t make me sorry for it.”
As day followed day, they seemed to go through endless towering walls of rock interspersed with small beaches and wild valleys and canyons. Occasionally they saw Indians, small and nearly naked and shy as deer.
“Who are they?” Roberta wondered out loud.
“Probably Huicholes or Coras. I’ve no idea how near the coast we are, though unless the final drop is an abrupt one, we’ve got a ways to go. This is still cool high country.”
Once they came to a strong shallow rapid that hung up the boat on the teeth of the rocks. They tried to lift the craft around the barrier, but couldn’t even get it more than halfway up the bank.
“We’ll give it a couple of days, and if we still can’t make it, we’ll strike off up that creekbed and see if we can’t hire some horses or burros and a guide. Jesus, I hope we don’t have to walk out of barranca country like this; it’ll take us a year.”
“You can always pretend it’s the Desert of Kyzyl Kum,” she remarked dryly. “After all, new country is new country.”
He scowled at her, but she smiled sweetly and went back to starting the fire. There were usually sticks and dried branches for a fire that had washed down on the beaches, but when there weren’t, they did without. That night they went to bed even earlier than usual to escape the drenching downpour that went on all night and through most of the next day. Jason attached their shelter to trees with a piece of rope and hung her manga on the side where the rain blew in. They slept well enough that night, but the next day they could only sit and watch the rain come down in torrents. “Jason?”
“Hmm.”
“Do men as well as women like, well, to be made love to?”
“Most of them.”
“It feels good when you do this to me. Does it feel good when I do it to you?”
“Can't you tell it does?”
“And this?”
“Ah God, yes.”
“Do all men get excited by the same things?”
“No, love, unfortunately they don’t. Some men like some things and some men like others, just like women. Some men don’t like being made love to at all, it does something to their machismo.”
“What don’t you like?”
His smile was slow and sensual. “Given the right circumstances, there’s hardly anything I don’t like.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Some things have to be spontaneous. There are lots of women who are put off if they think any more is expected of them than simply to be made love to, and you’ve had further to go than most. If you came to it, fine. If not, I certainly never felt cheated.”
“I still think you should have said something. I might never have thought of it.”
“Whatever should I have said something for? No, don’t stop what you’re doing, love. After all, I always said you had a natural talent...”
Much later she lay with her head on his shoulder and watched the silver drops of moisture forming and falling from the edge of their oilskin shelter. The lessening rain made a friendly pattering sound above their heads. She
realized that she finally knew the real meaning of that long-ago scene on the ship between Jessica and Will. At last she herself had experienced what had held them together for all those years, the mutual joy of each seeking the other’s pleasure, a spontaneous expression of love and caring that lifted each of them above themselves, made them feel freer, happier, more unselfish, more tender, more understanding, more devoted, more ardent than they were capable of being in the harsh and tedious cold of everyday living. It was a constant renewal of faith in the goodness of life and the power of love in the face of whatever cruelty, want, and pain the morrow might bring.
She turned to look at him and surprised on his face an expression compounded of love and anguish and even fear that made her know that he had been shaken even as she by what they had just experienced. She could only hope that in the end it wouldn’t be the fear that won.
*
By late afternoon the rain stopped, and a weak sun broke through the thinning clouds. It was Roberta who first noticed that the boat, which had been drawn halfway up the shelving beach, was now floating and tugging at the mooring line.
“I don’t like starting this late,” Jason said, “but I’m afraid the water may go down by morning.”
They hurriedly packed up and launched the boat, which cleared the rapids handily now. The reddening rays of the late afternoon sun struck slantwise against the tops of the sheer rock cliffs, making them seem as if enveloped in flame that reflected in the shimmering backwaters carved every now and then from the banks. This time of day the river lost its brown look, taking on instead the colors of the brilliant evening sky above where towering thunderheads blazed crimson against the azure blue.
Dark had fallen when they came to one of the longest beaches they had yet seen. Back from the river and on some unseen high ground they could make out firelight, and the sweet smell of wood smoke drifted through the air. Jason began to pole the raft toward shore.
“Surely you're not going to show yourself in a village?”
“There's no choice. Olmedo obviously didn't intend to go this far down the river, or else he had no idea how far it was. We're running out of food. I don't know where we are, either, or what the river is like up ahead. We've been incredibly fortunate so far, but our luck is bound to run out sometime.”
“Won't Zaragoza find out?”
“If this is as far in the wilderness as I think it is, they may not even speak Spanish. However, tuck your hair up in your hat, love, and I'll dirty up your face so that no one would ever suspect you've got the most marvelous body in Mexico. If a report comes in that two men are on the river, they may pay no attention to it.”
“Even two men with light eyes?”
Jason didn't answer.
As they were about to walk up toward the firelight, Jason removed a bottle of brandy from an empty flour bag.
“Why, you wretch!” Roberta exclaimed. “You mean to say you had that all the time and never even offered me a copita?”
He grinned and said reasonably, “Well, I didn't have one, either, did I? I thought possibly this might come in handy.”
“What about money? Wouldn’t they rather have that?”
“I don't want them to know we even have any money. No, this should do just fine.”
As they entered the little collection of stick and thatch huts, among which burned a sizable fire, the village seemed empty, but they were aware instinctively of being observed by unseen eyes. “Hola!” Jason called. “I have news and presents from the land upriver.” He held up the bottle and a handful of cigarrillos.
A cluster of men slowly emerged from the doorless openings of the huts, their obsidian eyes warily appraising the intruders. Some of them wore only loincloths and some the traditional white peasant pants and shirt gathered at the ankles and wrists and tied at the waist with a sash. They were small and stocky, with broad faces and fleshy noses. There was no sign of a woman or a child.
“Do any of you speak Spanish?” Jason asked conversationally as he solemnly handed a cigarrillo to each.
“A few of us,” a young man in white volunteered. “I go to work down the river every year for the sugar harvest,” he added proudly.
Jason opened the bottle and took a drink to show them there was nothing wrong with it, then handed it to the young man, who didn’t drink but instead handed it on to a squat, powerful-looking man in a loincloth who looked to be in his fifties. Meanwhile, several of the Indians passed about some burning brands to light the small cigars. Then they all squatted, Jason and Roberta included.
“What news do you bring?”
“There is rioting everywhere. Santa Anna may be through as President.”
They all smoked quietly for a bit and thought about it. “I thought Bustamante was President,” the young man said finally. “Santa Anna is a general, isn’t he? I remember Mario here telling us years ago when I was still a child that a general named Santa Anna was a hero, that he lost his leg against the French.”
“That’s the one,” Jason replied. “I’m surprised that the hacendados of the sugarcane haven’t been complaining of him. He is strangling the country with taxes.”
The young man shrugged. “The hacendados may complain, but how would we know? They don’t confide in us.”
The bottle was passed again, nearly empty this time. They began to talk of crops and drought and hunting and floods on the river, while Roberta wondered in agony how long she could be expected to sit on her heels. Mexican men were practically born sitting on their heels, but she was afraid that when it came time to get up she wouldn’t be able to stand. The brandy was finished and a squat pottery jug appeared containing liquid with a strong, rancid smell. It went burning down after the brandy, and Roberta thought that the top of her head would come off.
“Tell me,” Jason finally asked the young man, “what is the river like below here? Can you take a boat down it?”
“Not in the dry season,” he answered promptly. “Or rather, you must have a boat like mine that you can carry around the bad places. In the rains, who knows? There are no falls at least.”
“Would the water take us over the shallows now?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never done it in the rainy season,” he said. “There are often floods that bring down trees and even boulders that would smash any boat to pieces.”
“Let’s hope that there are no floods then. How far to the ocean?”
He shrugged again. “I’ve never been to the ocean. The river ends at the mangrove swamps at Boca de Asadero, but I doubt anyone has ever been through there.”
“You mean the river doesn’t end at San Bias?”
“Oh no. To get to San Bias, one must leave the river at La Presa, go some four or five leagues south to Navarette and then another few leagues to the west to San Bias.”
“Hmm. Thirty miles more or less from La Presa to San Bias,” Jason muttered in English, and Roberta guessed that the liquor was getting to him; she knew it was getting to her. “You’ve never been to San Bias?”
“Never, but I hope to go one day and see the ocean they talk about. They say it goes halfway around the world, but I don't believe it.” Roberta wondered how this young Indian visualized the world. It was impossible to guess.
The chief said something then, there was a scurrying about, and almost at once the most heartrending squeals. The men got up and began to wander in and out of the huts. Jason walked off deep in conversation with the young man. Roberta thankfully staggered to her feet, hoping they would all think she had merely had too much to drink. She noticed that some of them were none too steady on their feet either. They built up the fire again, and soon men came with platters of bloody pieces of meat and clumps of enormous green plantains, the large cooking bananas.
“We're in luck,” Jason told her. “The men have a feast at the beginning of the rainy season to placate the gods of the storm and the river. Their real village is back up there somewhere.” He waved vaguely with one hand. “If they discover you’
re a woman, we’re in trouble, though. I told them you were half-witted. They believe that half-wits and madmen have been touched by the gods and are sacred, so they see your arrival as a sign and are having the feast tonight instead of tomorrow midday as they’d planned.”
“You mean there is actually a place that the Spanish priests didn’t find?” she whispered.
He nodded. “This is one of them. The younger men who’ve been downriver have picked up a kind of bastard Catholicism, but they don’t think that the Catholic god has any power here, and they worship the old gods of important things like rain and fertility and the river. I said that in Spanish you are without sense but that I can converse with you in a sacred language not understood by most men. Their priest had to admit he did not indeed understand English.” She had noticed the Indians watching them with the most intense interest as they talked, and had wondered why. Now she knew, and marveled at Jason’s inventiveness.
They speared the hunks of meat on green sticks and held them over the fire. The green plantains they simply threw in the fire. All the time the jug went round, and they were all obviously getting drunker and drunker. Roberta had long since merely pretended to take a drink when it was her turn, but she didn’t think that Jason was pretending. If he didn’t look out, he was going to spoil everything. Just before they settled down to eating the scorched meat and banana with their fingers, Jason staggered down to the boat and came back with a small bag of salt. The young man tasted some on his finger, his eyes lit up, and he offered another finger taste to the chief, who showed more animation than he had thus far. Apparently Jason couldn’t have produced a more welcome gift.
The Indians ate unbelievable amounts of food until their bellies were noticeably distended, except for a couple of them who passed out in the middle of the feast. The meat turned out to be rather tough pork with a wild flavor. Jason told her that the pigs were jabalis, wild ones, with long black bristles and wicked curved tusks. The feast was announced to be over when the last Indian sank down insensible and began to snore. Jason had long since sprawled out on his face asleep. Roberta noticed that there was the better part of a cooked pig left, and she fetched the flour sack the brandy had been in and put all but a few pieces of the meat inside. Carrying the sack in one hand and a bunch of the green uncooked plantains in the other, she packed it all carefully away in their boat and made up the bed.
A Masque of Chameleons Page 33